5:53AM Measured temp at 78F, still 10F above ambient! Very soft rennet curd, no whey on top or sides from lactic coagulation. Cut curd into 1 cm cubes. Ladled one scoop into small basket mold, cut curds fell apart and partly drained out bottom of mold. Recovered and set aside to allow more synersis/whey expulsion.

9:30AM Ladled first scoop of soft mostly lactic coagulated curds into basket molds, added diced semi-dried ginger root to 4, slowly added more scoops of curds (& layers of ginger in 4) until full with excess into large Ricotta baskets. Went for 3 hours mountain bike ride.

1:30PM Found curds draining nicely, as two large ricotta baskets of curds were thin, turned one into the other to form taller cheese.

11:30PM Turned remaining ricotta basket cheeses, all still very moist.

Nov 6, 2011

7:00AM Cheeses have drained further 1/4-1/2 inch in height, but still very moist and sticky to touch, smell OK, poured cold water down draining board underneath molds to rinse off drained curd bits and whey.

Nov 7, 2011

6:00AM Cheeses have drained and shrunk a further 1/4 inch in height. Still very moist and sticky to touch, smell OK, tuned and placed on mats in cave. Ricotta and pyramid cheeses fell, small St Marcellin cylinder mold cheeses did not.

6:00PM Small St Marcellin cheeses still not dropped as still sticky, banged on mats and got to drop.

Nov 12, 2011

Finally got new full size cheese fridge cave set up and bought some plastic boxes as high hummidity ripening boxes. Placed cheeses on mats inside, found that on bottom where most humid the Pc had bloomed but as didn't turn the cheeses they had grown into the mats, thus had problem removing, not good. Placed on new clean mats in ripening boxes in new cave.

Ate another one today, also a small round disk but less dried out as in different ripening box in cheese cave fridge, beautifully runny!

To be fair, the ones with the semi-dried ginger didn't have a lot of ginger flavour or texture difference as the cheese flavour overpowered the ginger and the chunks of semi dried ginger softened in the moist cheeses.

Ate 3 today with friend (along with some homemade beer):1) Small disk in background of first picture was very dried out.2) Last pyramid shape was beautifully gooey.3) Small round disk was almost too gooey.

Thanks for such a great pictoral sharing of your make! It was funny to see the beginning photos because I think I have all the same molds as you so it looked very much like one of my soft cheese makes. I'll try aging some of mine out and see what happens....have a lot of Valencay style and some Chaource for experiments with longer aging.